Entries tagged with smallville

I have a flight to catch in about 3 hours and I'll most likely be gone from LJ for about two weeks, so it's extremely sad one of my last posts before vaca begins is going to be about "Smallville", but...

Watching that utterly fail S8 finale, it was bugging me for some time what it reminded me of. I sauntered over to Ksite and read some of the various posts on how French director Jeannot Szwarc was probably borrowing some visual cues from Cocteau's "La belle et la bête" when he directed "Bride". Despite SV's general mediocrity and laughably bad writing, I can't say with conviction is necessarily untrue. Obviously, SV is never going to touch Cocteau's boot heel, but hell, maybe they could have been lifting ideas from him. Considering what they seemed to be trying for at least part of the time with the Chloe/Davis storyline, I'd also suspect it's probably truer than not. Of course, right up until the, although not entirely surprising, violent end to that storyline in the (unfortunately, also not entirely surprising as I'm apparently a glutton for bad tv) total mediocre finale.

I suppose it was the Cocteau talk that did it, but I finally realized the way S8 ended, specifically regarding the Davis/Chloe/Clark(Jimmy) arc, reminded me a lot of Buñuel's "Belle de jour". Obviously, it's "Smallville" so it's more like the high school play rendition of BdJ. However, like "Bride" was probably lifting ideas/imagery off Cocteau, I could buy the finale - perhaps earlier in the Davis/Chloe/Clark triangle - was at least partially inspired by BdJ (again, through the crappy SV filter of mediocrity. Awww, look at SV, trying to wear the big man's clothes). I can see Chloe as Severine/Belle, Clark and/or Jimmy as Pierre and Davis as Marcel. Hell, even Oliver can fit pretty easily in the Husson role. If you've seen the movie, I'd say they fit into those roles fairly well without me having to explain it. Which I probably won't get away with, but my mind is already half on vacation, so I'll probably get into more detail later if anyone cares to discuss my batshit further.

Maybe I'm just overthinking it all (equating SV to Buñuel or Cocteau in any way?? NO! Not overthinking at all! [/sarcasm]) and I'm full of it. I welcome any of the SV/Chlavis fans on my flist to tell me so.